As the national unemployment rate held steady at its lowest level in more than 18 years, U.S. job growth in February soared, beating expectations and posting the largest gain since July 2016.

That’s according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which said nonfarm payrolls swelled by 313,000 last month. Economists had predicted a rise of 205,000. Following February’s strong showing, job gains have averaged 242,000 per month over the last three months, officials said. In February, the construction and manufacturing sectors did especially well, adding 61,000 jobs (best since 2007) and 31,000, respectively.

Despite the February jobs surge, the unemployment rate remained 4.1%, though that was still the lowest level since December 2000. Encouragingly, the labor force participation rate jumped from 62.7% to 63%, the biggest rise in years. Notably, the employment-to-population ratio for people ages 25-54 – so-called prime age workers – reached 79.3% in February, according to Jed Kolko, chief economist at Indeed. That was the highest participation rate for that demographic since the middle of 2008.

“The February employment report was an absolute knock out with strong growth in payroll employment and a sharp increase in labor force participation,” Neil Dutta, an economist at Renaissance Macro, told YahooFinance. “The pick-up in the labor force implies little need at this juncture for the Fed to speed up the pace of its rate tightening campaign. There is still room to run in this labor market recovery. The unemployment rate has been flat for the last five months. That is a good thing right now.”

Still, the jobs report wasn’t all good news. Wages were nearly flat, ticking up 0.1% month-over-month. That showing was lower than what economists expected. Even so, wages were, on average, 2.6% greater than the same time period the prior year, officials said.